“You haven’t heard his latest, I suppose?” said the doctor, smiling.
“What is it?” Sophia asked perfunctorily.
“He wants to take to ballooning. It seems he’s been up once.”
Constance made a deprecating noise with her lips.
“However, that’s not his surprise,” the doctor added, smiling again at the floor. He was sitting on the music-stool, and saying to himself, behind his mask of effulgent good-nature: “It gets more and more uphill work, cheering up these two women. I’ll try them on Federation.”
Federation was the name given to the scheme for blending the Five Towns into one town, which would be the twelfth largest town in the kingdom. It aroused fury in Bursley, which saw in the suggestion nothing but the extinction of its ancient glory to the aggrandizement of Hanbridge. Hanbridge had already, with the assistance of electric cars that whizzed to and fro every five minutes, robbed Bursley of two-thirds of its retail trade—as witness the steady decadence of the Square!—and Bursley had no mind to swallow the insult and become a mere ward of Hanbridge. Bursley would die fighting. Both Constance and Sophia were bitter opponents of Federation. They would have been capable of putting Federationists to the torture. Sophia in particular, though so long absent from her native town, had adopted its cause with characteristic vigour. And when Dr. Stirling wished to practise his curative treatment of taking the sisters “out of themselves,” he had only to start the hare of Federation and the hunt would be up in a moment. But this afternoon he did not succeed with Sophia, and only partially with Constance. When he stated that there was to be a public meeting that very night, and that Constance as a ratepayer ought to go to it and vote, if her convictions were genuine, she received his chaff with a mere murmur to the effect that she did not think she should go. Had the man forgotten that Spot was dead? At length he became grave, and examined them both as to their ailments, and nodded his head, and looked into vacancy while meditating upon each case. And then, when he had inquired where they meant to go for their summer holidays, he departed.
“Aren’t you going to see him out?” Constance whispered to Sophia, who had shaken hands with him at the drawing room door. It was Sophia who did the running about, owing to the state of Constance’s sciatic nerve. Constance had, indeed, become extraordinarily inert, leaving everything to Sophia.
Sophia shook her head. She hesitated; then approached Constance, holding out her hand and disclosing the crumpled telegram.
“Look at that!” said she.
Her face frightened Constance, who was always expectant of new anxieties and troubles. Constance straightened out the paper with difficulty, and read—
Mr. Gerald Scales is dangerously ill here. Boldero, 49, Deansgate, Manchester.
All through the inexpressibly tedious and quite unnecessary call of Dr. Stirling—(Why had he chosen to call just then? Neither of them was ill)—Sophia had held that telegram concealed in her hand and its information concealed in her heart. She had kept her head up, offering a calm front to the world. She had given no hint of the terrible explosion—for an explosion it was. Constance was astounded at her sister’s self-control, which entirely passed her comprehension. Constance felt that worries would never cease, but would rather go on multiplying until death ended all. First, there had been the frightful worry of the servant; then the extremely distressing death and burial of Spot—and now it was Gerald Scales turning up again! With what violence was the direction of their thoughts now shifted! The wickedness of maids was a trifle; the death of pets was a trifle. But the reappearance of Gerald Scales! … That involved the possibility of consequences which could not even be named, so afflictive was the mere prospect to them. Constance was speechless, and she saw that Sophia was also speechless.
Of course the event had been bound to happen. People do not vanish never to be heard of again. The time surely arrives when the secret is revealed. So Sophia said to herself—now!
She had always refused to consider the effect of Gerald’s reappearance. She had put the idea of it away from her, determined to convince herself that she had done with him finally and forever. She had forgotten him. It was years since he had ceased to disturb her thoughts—many years. “He must be dead,” she had persuaded herself. “It is inconceivable that he should have lived on and never come across me. If he had been alive and learnt that I had made money, he would assuredly have come to me. No, he must be dead!”
And he was not dead! The brief telegram overwhelmingly shocked her. Her life had been calm, regular, monotonous. And now it was thrown into an indescribable turmoil by five words of a telegram, suddenly, with no warning whatever. Sophia had the right to say to herself: “I have had my share of trouble, and more than my share!” The end of her life promised to be as awful as the beginning. The mere existence of Gerald Scales was a menace to her. But it was the simple impact of the blow that affected her supremely, beyond ulterior things. One might have pictured fate as a cowardly brute who had struck this ageing woman full in the face, a felling blow, which
